


Crossing Bridges

by fascinationex



Series: SDV fics by fascinationex [1]
Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Domestic, Ficlet Collection, JoJa Corporation, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Xeno, any warnings will be provided in chapter notes, ficlets not in chronological order, fleeing modern life to take to the woods, rating may change as ficlets are added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:00:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22253791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fascinationex/pseuds/fascinationex
Summary: A series of short fics and ficlets about player character Erin coming to Pelican Town.I'm looking to use this fic as a space to explore the game's worldbuilding, expand upon canon scenes, develop character relationships, look at soft domestic slice of life stuff and hopefully write me some xeno.Chapter #3: Erin encounters Krobus for the first time.
Relationships: Krobus/Player (Stardew Valley)
Series: SDV fics by fascinationex [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1602052
Comments: 23
Kudos: 100





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First, we meet Erin. And JoJa corp.

**Join us. Thrive.**

The words were beamed out over Erin's head, taking up the huge projection that filled the front wall of the office space.

That wall was the cleanest thing in the corporate JoJa branch in Zuzu City. Everything else was coated in a combination of weird, lingering greases and the dust that stuck to them. Actually, the whole office space was pretty depressing, from the lingering smells of organic decay and overwhelming air freshener to the ugly cubicle dividers and cracked computer cases. Erin hadn't asked why the whole place had to be grim and grimy—because the other major feature of the JoJa offices was that nobody spoke. Silence was enforced. 

Erin heard the dull rattling of the office keyboards, loud even against the hum of the air conditioning, in her dreams now. She'd been having that for a while—that, and the 'endless spreadsheet' dreams that she just couldn't shake.

Not for the first time, she wondered if a degree in something else—like, _anything_ except literature, really—would have put her in a more advantageous position than living pay cheque to pay cheque in her shared, miniscule inner city apartment.

"There will come a day when you feel crushed by the burden of modern life," Erin's granddad had said, all those years ago. And then, cryptically, he'd made her promise not to open his letter until that time.

What he'd left her in that letter was meant to be her in-case-of-emergency-only, get-out-of-modern-life-free card, she gathered. But she wasn't sure if she felt crushed by the burden of modern life, exactly. How was she ever supposed to measure that? Maybe she was just crushed by the ongoing burden of housing and feeding herself.

But Erin had been... thinking about the letter for a while. Long enough, and hard enough, that she'd started carrying the letter around with her in fear of losing it, which was stupid, because she didn't even know what was in it. It might just as well have been Granddad's collection of soothing haikus or her grandma's cookie recipe. Who knew?

Maybe today was a good day to find out, though. She wasn't sure if she was 'burdened by modern life,' exactly, but she _was_ tired and poor and this job was awful and, now that she was listing grievances, she hadn't heard from Michael two cubicles down in... longer than she could conveniently remember.

Erin adjusted her glasses on her nose and let her eyes flick up at the camera monitoring her cubicle. There was a little red light glowing consistently beneath the lens. It was recording, but... she hadn't gotten very many demerits this quarter for extended bathroom breaks, too-long pauses in her typing or taking personal calls.

Feeling a little daring—and also, inevitably, feeling dumb for feeling daring about so small and simple a thing—she cracked open the drawer to the shoebox-sized allocated space for personal items in her cubicle. Her bag was crammed in there. She unzipped it and slipped her grandfather's letter out. He'd sealed it with purple wax, silly old thing, and it gleamed in the sickly glow from her computer screen. She slid her thumbnail under it and listened to the seal crack softly.

The sound seemed awfully loud and significant, but the exhausted rattling of keyboards around her never even slowed. Likely everyone was too numb to bother with curiosity, excepting the overseers—who were no doubt already analysing the pause in her work.

_Dear Erin_ , the letter began. _If you're reading this, you just be in dire need of a change_.

 _You could say that_ , she thought drily, glancing up at the unblinking red light and the blank lens of the camera again.

Amid the keyboard rattling, she heard the click-click of rapid footsteps.

"Erin? Hi, Erin," interrupted a voice from the entryway of her cubicle.

Erin looked up again at a man she'd never met before. He was tall, clean-shaven and dressed in a pristine JoJa polo shirt, a faux-leather belt and a crisply-creased pair of dress trousers. From his practiced smile, she already knew why he was there.

"Hi," she said, smoothing her face automatically into a much less practiced smile. It was about equally sincere.

"I'm Trevor, your staff experience manager."

"Right," she agreed. 

"We upstairs couldn't help but notice that you weren't working," he said, edging further into the cubicle. "We just wanted to check in with you and make sure everything was going okay?"

"Yep," she said. "All fine."

Trevor's smile didn't really warm up once he'd gotten a good look at her in person. Generally speaking, greasy-haired, slumped women in indifferently-laundered uniforms were not who JoJa corporate wanted representing them. 

"Well. Well, that's great! I'm glad there's no problem. Now, of course, as you know, we really do need all of our employees to be pulling their weight—imagine how the other valued members of staff would feel if they knew you were being equally remunerated without maintaining the same quality and quantity of output, Erin. How do you think that would make them feel?"

 _They, like me, probably wouldn't care very much_ , Erin thought wearily. Then she wondered how he was being 'remunerated' for his time and hard work—but she discarded the thought fast. He was probably just as awkward and unhappy doing his incredibly shitty job as she felt doing hers.

She suppressed a sigh. "They'd probably be really disappointed," she lied, if only to see his shoulders relax. "I'll get right back to it, thanks for the reminder."

"It's what I'm here for," he said with affected sincerity. "And, you know, Erin, if you're ever having some kind of problem that affects your work, you're welcome to come over to HR to discuss it in confidence."

In confidence that she'd be losing her job, she assumed. "Thanks for that, Trevor," she said blandly. 

"Now, I'm sorry to say it, but I'm obligated to remind you that we work on a system of merits and demerits here, and unfortunately an unnecessarily long pause in your work does attract a demerit to your record."

"I know," said Erin. Then, "Hey, since you're down here anyway, would you mind checking on Micheal?" She pointed at the wall of her cubicle. "He's two cubicles that way. I'm worried that he hasn't moved in a while." Like, weeks. 

"...Michael, yes." Trevor's practiced smile became fixed. "Don't worry about Michael, Erin. Just focus on your own work! If we manage a 32% increase in production, we may just win a new non-dairy creamer option for our branch's break room. Wouldn't that be great?"

Erin felt her soul draining out of her, and she could not confirm that it _wasn't_ taking her brain with it. "Uh-huh. That would be great."

He smiled even harder at her. "I'll let you get right on back to work, then!"

She turned back to her screen and glanced at the letter again in the guise of putting it away.

It was sappy, but clear and mercifully brief.

 _Connections with real people and nature_... uh-huh...

Oh. 

Erin paused, turned halfway towards her drawer with the letter still open. She... owned a farm? Just off a tiny seaside town?

Her very first thought was that she could _not_ afford to back-pay land taxes on a property. 

Her second thought was that she was just going to leave now, immediately, and go sleep on her granddad's farm and breathe fresh air that didn't stink of, of hot rubber, or rubbish bins, or of someone else's burnt toast. She'd lay there in the dirt until it swallowed her. She'd never leave again. 

Neither was exactly a good thought.

Slowly, she put the letter back in the drawer—but open, and facing up, and she didn't bother to close the opening.

The camera faced the same direction as her screen, and wouldn't show what she was doing. They'd need the network administrator for that, and he was spread too thin to be constantly monitoring the work of isolated staff members. Erin's keyboard rejoined the ambient rattling.

A surreptitious alt+tab to the JoJa Search Engine page (the only such one accessible at work, as non-JoJa sites were largely blocked from access) showed that the land taxes for a place in the middle of nowhere (even large place, and even a pretty, picturesque nowhere) turned out to be pretty negligible compared to the living costs of Zuzu City. 

And unfortunately Erin couldn't afford to pack up and run away _immediately_ —she would at least have to give notice at work and find someone to take over her lease.

What if she COULD move there, though? She put 'Pelican Town Stardew Valley' into the field as her next search term.

There were fewer than ten results. It sure existed, though. Some young developer had a portfolio that said he was based there, and a couple of ThriveBook pages came up... It had a local general store and that had a web page too—though the site was a cluttered and ancient thing with clunky frames (and, hell, it even had a guestbook).

There was also a JoJa location there, presented in a link to the slickly modern thrive.joja.com as the top result. As a current JoJa employee, Erin could confirm that that was kind of a disappointment. 

There was a number for the general store on that ancient web page...

Erin glanced down at the letter. 

_PS. If Lewis is still alive say hi to the old guy for me, will ya?_

Well, least she had a place to start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Micheal is the name of the skeleton from two cubicles down in the introduction


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erin shows up in Pelican Town. The natives are suspiciously friendly.

The bus ride seemed to go on forever. At first heading out of the city seemed fascinating. Erin hadn't spent much of her life away from urban environments and the changing landscape was compelling. There were oak trees, green grass—mountains, even, which she only realised as the road they were on wound higher and higher through curving paths. It was a far cry from the towering steel, hard concrete and gleaming glass of Zuzu City.

But it was also all the same, and even though it was pretty, the excitement waned after a few hours. Even reminding herself _Hey, you could be in a JoJa Corp branch office,_ didn't help that much. By the time the driver yelled "Pelican Town next!" back to her, she was bored out of her skull. 

The bus stopped alongside a rickety mine cart on derelict tracks, which looked like it hadn't operated for many a year. There was a cracked ticket machine and a worn dirt path. None of it looked like it saw a lot of use. 

"How often do the buses run out here?" she asked the driver as the bus pulled in. 

"Mmm, once a week? I think there used to be another line from here to Calico, but you have to go into Zuzu City to get out there now."

"Oh." So if Erin wanted to go anywhere, it was going to require a pricey ticket and a bus ride that would take hours. She guessed you didn't get a monthly public transportation pass out in the middle of nowhere. That was okay. That was fine. She'd be fine. "This is fine," she repeated aloud. 

The bus driver laughed. "Last call to stay on," she offered. 

Stupidly, Erin actually hesitated for a second, before she reminded herself that there was nothing to go back to the city for anyway. What, was she going to miss her housemate? The one who kept pig shit in the fridge to grow mushrooms? Would she yearn for her office cubicle? She scoffed at herself.

"I'm sure it'll be fine," she said. "Thanks for the trip." She hefted her bags higher before hopping down. The extra weight gave the landing some extra impact, which she felt all the way up her body from her sensible sneakers to her neck. "Oof!"

"You're welcome," said the driver cheerfully, and then the door closed with a pneumatic hiss and a soft thump, and she pulled away from the stop in a rush of rumbling engines and exhaust.

And then it was... kind of quiet, actually. No motors or wheels, no train-track rattling, no voices drifting up from street level. She could hear some kind of bird smacking a tree with its beak, which she guessed was what woodpeckers did. That was woodpeckers, right? She'd never seen one before. Upon inspection, it had a bright red crest. Huh.

Erin had barely had time to pull out her crumpled map before she heard the crunch of approaching footsteps, loud and clear in the relative silence. 

She looked up from the paper to find a tall woman approaching, dressed in thick green work trousers and a sleeveless jacket with a fleecy collar. Her red hair was the kind of red kids usually had, stark and flaming bright, but she must have been at least in her mid forties. She had square shoulders, a tiny waist, a clean and comfortable look—she could have stepped out of a catalogue for Idyllic Mountain Living or something. They probably used her to sell rustic wooden furniture for your mountain cabin or something.

"Hi there. Erin, right?"

"Uh, hi, yes," Erin said, stumbling over the words. She hadn't expected that someone would show up to meet her. She was dressed in ripped jeans and a hooded sweatshirt that hadn't been washed in a month, which was about when she'd last done her hair, if she thought about it, which ...she chose not to. And now she'd been travelling for hours, too. She tugged at her torn cuff, which let her bag slide awkwardly down her shoulder.

"I'm Robin, the local carpenter." Ha. Called it. "Mayor Lewis sent me here to fetch you and show you to your new home. He's there right now, tidying things up for your arrival."

Wait, what?

"He is?" Erin blinked. She'd worked in a cubicle that the paid cleaners hadn't even bothered dusting for years (and she'd resented it too much to clean it herself). The idea that someone might 'tidy' something in preparation for her arrival felt both very considerate and like kind of a lot of, uh, pressure. ...Especially when the thing Erin personally loved most in the world was pretty much just laying down. She wasn't looking forward to putting in the effort to repay anyone, socially speaking. "Wow, I didn't mean to put anyone out..."

Robin shook her head, sending loose little strands of hair flying around her cheeks. The sun caught them and lit them up like hot gold. "Don't tell him that. He won't hear of it. Even if you weren't the granddaughter of an old friend, it's sure not often we get anyone new moving into town here! Come on, follow me, the farm's over this way—I'll show you."

"Right," said Erin. She had not realised that Granddad's old friend was the mayor. Alright then. 

The path between the bus stop and the old farm gate was short, a blessing Erin felt keenly since she was laden with two heavy bags. She knew intellectually that she really didn't have many possessions, but it certainly felt like a lot of stuff when she was carrying it all!

The gate was stiff. The metal edge dug into the dirt beneath and had to be heaved up as one pushed, and the hinges stuck and screeched in protest when Robin made an irritated noise and forced them anyway. "This is Eriador farm—no, leave that open, I'll close it on my way out," she added.

Eriador. She'd seen it on the paperwork but, by Yoba, her granddad had been a nerd.

Erin let her hand drop from the top of the gate and turned back around to the farm. There was a weird swooping sensation in her belly as she looked around at it all. It wasn't that she had exactly expected neat rows of vegetables that someone else had already planted for her, or anything... but she hadn't expected this, either.

She didn't know why she hadn't, in hindsight.

The farm had truly been left to grow wild since her grandfather's death at least—and that had been many years ago now.

Erin looked around at the big chunks of rock, the roots, the trees—Yoba, the trees and shrubs and weeds had been left to grow wherever they pleased for years now, and it was very obvious. 

"Is something the matter?" Robin asked, peering around with her, once she realised Erin had stopped walking. 

She looked at Erin's face.

She looked around, apparently with new eyes. 

"Ah. It's a bit overgrown," Robin admitted slowly, brow furrowing. "But there's definitely some good soil under that mess. And it'll take less to clean it up than you think, I'm sure of it."

That was sort of comforting, Erin guessed. She'd been reading up, so she had some ideas about what "good soil" might mean in general, but... she knew very little about what to do with it.

"And here's your new home!" Robin beamed.

Erin followed her waving arm. The farmhouse was a one-room, wooden building with a pile of old, dry wood stacked up against one side beneath the overhang. The old roofing was painted red and someone had already pinned back the shutters and cleaned the thick, slightly warped window glass. 

It looked... well, small. But kind of cute and cozy, too. In its way. And even that one room was way more space than she'd been living in.

The door creaked only gently when it opened and a man, grey and a little crooked with age, emerged. He was wearing high trousers and suspenders with a brown woolen flat cap, which seemed to Erin only to emphasise an odd, old-timey aesthetic. She'd never seen a flat cap in the city, outside of films. 

"Ah, the new farmer! Welcome," he said, making his way down the two stairs that separated the little verandah from the dirt and rock, "I'm Lewis, Mayor of Pelican Town. Do you know, everyone's been asking about you since we knew you were coming! You're quite a big deal."

"Oh," said Erin, unsure what else to say. After a second of racing thoughts and rapidly increasing heart rate, she said: "I'm Erin. Nice to meet you?" She didn't mean for it to come out as a question, but her voice squeaked on the end syllable. "Thank you for doing this," she added, although she wasn't entirely sure what 'this' was. But those windows were definitely cleaner than years of neglect would have rendered them.

"Ah, well. It hadn't been aired out for a while." Lewis turned to look at the house as though it was new to him. "It's a good house," he said, firmly. "It's very rustic."

"Rustic," Robin repeated, raising her eyebrows. The skin near her eyes crinkled with fine lines when she laughed. She propped her hands on her hips, and surveyed the cottage very critically. "That's certainly one way to put it... 'crusty' might be a little more apt, though." 

"Robin!" Mayor Lewis twitched. "That's rude!" He turned back towards Erin, who definitely felt less offended by Robin's assessment than Lewis seemed to think she should. "Don't listen to her, Erin. Robin's the local carpenter, and she's just trying to make you feel like you need to upgrade." 

Erin couldn't help the tiny huff of laughter that escaped her.

"I—what? No!" Robin squawked. "I just—"

"Anyway, Erin." Lewis didn't let her get a word in edgewise. "You must be tired from the long journey. You should get some rest. Tomorrow you ought to explore the town a bit and introduce yourself—people would appreciate that." 

Of course they would. Erin wasn't sure how she felt about it, personally. "Oh, sure," she said anyway.

"Right then. We'll—Oh, I almost forgot. If you have anything to sell, just place it in this box here. Someone will come by during the night to collect it." 

"They ...will?" That seemed, uh, weird.

Lewis tilted his head. "It's an initiative of the owners of our general store, Caroline or Pierre. They distribute to buyers either here or in the cities—they have a large network of independent contacts. Whatever it is, they'll usually find a buyer, and they'll give you a fair chunk of the sell price, too." 

"Oh," said Erin. "That's what Granddad used to do?" 

"Your grandfather would remember Pierre as a man of twenty at best, Erin!" laughed Lewis. Oh. Right. Duh. "No, he had to find his own buyers and make his own way. You can too, if you prefer," he added. "But the shipping bin is there if you want to use it."

"Oh, right," she said. "Thanks for letting me know. I guess I'll talk to Pierre about it tomorrow?" 

He nodded cheerfully. "That's right. Pierre or Caroline." 

There was a certain emphasis on the word 'Caroline', which Erin noticed but didn't really understand.

"Pierre can be a little bit high strung," Robin added, so blandly that it was itself notable. Right. Caroline, then, Erin thought. She wasn't sure if she'd even have the energy to talk to everyone the following day, but that would at least get her into town.

"I wish you the best of luck, Erin," Mayor Lewis said smoothly, neatly avoiding any further gossip about the residents of Pelican Town. "I left a little something to get you started on the table in there," he added.

The idea of being presented with a gift of any kind left Erin cold, sweating and queasy with the inevitable, upsetting implications of polite reciprocity, and some of that must have shown on her face because he hastened to add: "It's nothing too special! Don't you worry." 

"Thank you," Erin said, feeling totally robotic about... all of it. She wanted a nap. One that lasted six or eight hours, ideally. 

Mayor Lewis had a concerned knot forming between his brows beneath that hat. Nevertheless, he only reiterated his intention to leave her to get some rest, patted her gently on the shoulder and then cleared out, taking the friendly and outspoken Robin with him. 

"If you do need anything built," Robin said in parting, "you just let me know!"

"Sure thing," Erin agreed. Built? She couldn't imagine. 

She waited until she heard the old gate creak slowly and noisily closed behind the pair before she headed up into the cottage. 

The single room had a table, an old slatted wooden bed with what seemed to be an even older mattress, and a fireplace with a dry log in the grate. Beneath the table was a variety of old tools, sufficiently mismatched to imply that they'd been sourced from multiple places, secondhand—she spotted a watering can and the gleam of the curved edge on a dangerously sharp scythe. On top of the table was a decorative plant and a slim paper package next to a letter. 

_Please don't let that contain money,_ Erin thought, preemptively mortified—but she needn't have worried because it didn't. Instead, it seemed to contain seeds. Seeds for sowing. Into the ground. And Lewis had written a sweet letter to her in an old fashioned cursive with a slight shake in some of the letters. A little something to get her started. 

Huh. It wasn't like she hadn't _considered_ growing things. She was moving to a farm, obviously. It was just... She hadn't considered it to be a thing she'd do, you know, immediately...

Erin flipped the package over. Full sun... loosen dirt with a fork or a hoe... break up any hard pieces to prevent odd parsnip shapes... sow seeds around 6mm deep, then cover and water well and regularly to keep soil moist and don't let them dry out.

The idea of growing things for money seemed, in some ways, deeply intimidating—but reading the package directions on a pack of parsnip seeds, it didn't sound completely undoable. 

She glanced over her shoulder out the door.

There was plenty of dirt out there. She didn't have to tackle the idea of taking out a tree just yet—she could just rip out some weeds and move some rocks and she'd have plenty of space for this one little patch of parsnips. 

She wanted desperately to fall over on the bed, but she knew that if she did she'd never crawl back out. Instead, she dropped her bags, dug through the pile of tools beneath the table until she found something that looked like a ground breaking item, and headed right back outside.

It wasn't as straightforward as she'd told herself, of course; in the end it took Erin and the pickaxe she'd been gifted an hour just to clear enough ground. Some of the rocks were too heavy to lever out of the dirt on their own, and it was sweaty and physically difficult work to break them—and that was only in pursuit of clearing enough of the ground to break up and sow.

When she got out there with the hoe and busted up the thick, long-undisturbed dirt, particles got everywhere, fine and dry and curiously pleasant smelling. It wasn't quite like city mud: it smelled of wild, living things and not at all like sewerage. She felt dirty when she was done, but not in, like, a gross and infectious way. 

It was just... dirt. And now it was dirt all over her shoes and her hands and, honestly, probably in her mouth and hair. Definitely on her glasses. 

After that, it went smoothly, though: Erin put her seeds in—alright, some were more like a centimetre than 6mm exactly, but who was counting—and watered them in using the watering can that had been left under the table for her.

By then she was astonished by her own uncommon productivity, and also by how dark it had gone. The sun had set, and cool purple dusk had taken over the sky with no competition from ambient light sources. 

Erin's shoulders ached and she was exhausted, but she sat back on the steps of the cottage and kicked off her filthy shoes. She put her head back on the old wooden boards of the verandah and watched the sky slowly darken further, until the gleam of stars became clearer and clearer.

With no light pollution, she could see stars she'd never even known were up there in an endless glittering array against the velvet backdrop of night. The night-time insects began a cautious chirping, at first one or two in isolation and then all at once. The air smelled clean. Helplessly, she relaxed.

Erin nearly drifted off to sleep there, bare-toed on her new steps.

 _Come on,_ she thought to herself. _Get up before you sleep on the steps and wake up aching._

Usually when Erin hauled herself out of a sleepy daze to dump her tired body into bed, she discovered that she'd missed the tiny period in which sleep would take her and stayed awake for restless hours, resentful in its wake. But tonight she stumbled the few steps up to her door, kicked it closed with one heel, stripped her jeans and her hooded sweatshirt off and collapsed onto the ancient mattress in one thirty-second movement. From then she was practically unconscious.

The next thing Erin knew was the crowing of a rooster, and dawn.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where the "not in chronological order" tag comes in. I want to write about the other characters and meeting them and stuff... but I also wanted to write about Erin seeing Krobus first. :)

Erin didn't know it, but the first time she met Krobus was during her very first spring in Pelican Town. 

The sky was swollen and heavy with black clouds. The rain came down hard, one of those all-day, enthusiastic downpours that Erin would soon learn were characteristic of springtime in the valley. 

She was on her way back from the village, taking the long way through the forest where the salmonberries were. They didn't fetch much, but she was still waiting for her next planting of turnips to be ready to pull. Hopefully they'd come out a little less ugly this time, and she'd get a higher price for them, but that was probably a week away at least.

With the cost of breaking her lease, and prices in Zuzu city being what they were, Erin's savings had only amounted to about 500g in the first place. It was with some anxiety but absolutely no surprise that she was beginning to run low. The springtime salmonberries, which grew like little red jewels buried in the dark foliage of their shrubs, helped—and if she reserved some, they froze well, so she wouldn't go hungry as long as she could convince herself she was keen on berries. 

These were rapid, nervous thoughts that brought Erin crunching through the wet grass in the rain, eyes peeled for wild leeks and fresh berries. Cindersap was pretty when it rained, at least: everything bright, slick and verdant, the stream moving gently just out of sight 

She startled at the sound of a high, sharp cry. Then that little girl who lived with the ranch lady, Jas, came careening up the stairs that led down to the sewer grate, splattering mud beneath her small feet as she scrambled. 

She almost collided with Erin but stopped a handspan away, panting, and squealed: "There's something moving around down there!" 

Erin blinked, and then shifted her berry basket to her off hand and brushed her damp hair out of her eyes. It was no use: her glasses were fogged up from the temperature discrepancy between her skin and the cold water, and thoroughly streaked besides.

Very contrary to what her father would have preferred, Erin did not particularly like children. It was unfair to hear Jas's tiny child voice and think, _why does that have to be so grating?_ but she did. It was only her good fortune that most of the young people in Pelican Town were eighteen or nineteen, with the two glaring exceptions in the shape of Vincent and Jas.

"Oh... I'm sure it's only a stray animal," Erin said, peering gingerly down at the girl. She paused, eyeing the hem of her purple dress.

"And you're covered all over in mud. Should you be at home with, uh, it's Marnie, isn't it?" At home, or else anywhere except within sticky child-finger distance of Erin, really.

Jas just pulled a face at Erin, presumably because she didn't like being told what to do—relatable—and then raced off in the opposite direction just as fast as her gangly child legs would take her. She wasn't heading back in the direction of Marnie's ranch, but it wasn't like she could get much wetter or muddier. She'd probably just go back when she got hungry. That was what most animals did.

Erin glanced down the gritty steps towards the sewerage grate. It probably really was just a stray animal. Back in Zuzu city, there were rats the size of _dogs_ in the sewers. And not half so friendly, either.

But then, it couldn't hurt to look, could it? Despite herself, she climbed down to have a look. Her sensible boots crunched on the grimy and uneven surfaces, subtly audible through the rain. 

The man-sized maw of the sewer tunnel was pitch black behind its old iron grate. The air wafting from it was humid, thick and foul. Erin scrunched up her nose.

Nothing immediately seemed to be stirring back there.

Whatever it was, it seemed it had gone—assuming it had existed outside Jas's imagination at all in the first place.

But as Erin squinted, her eyes began to adjust a little, and she was able to pick it out—two circles, and a jagged slash beneath them, three strangely pale spots in the dimness of the tunnel. 

Her skin prickled. She couldn't have said if it was a person or just a series of objects that her brain interpreted as a face in the shadows. 

Then the circles blinked, and with a steamy hiss, whatever made the shapes in the dimness shifted and disappeared. 

_Yoba_ , Erin thought, feeling her skin crawl from head to heel. She strained her eyes, trying to see anything in the murky dimness, but whatever she'd seen—no, it was gone. 

_What the hell was that?_

Because although the arrangement of shapes had sort of roughly suggested a face, it was by no means the face of anything she'd ever encountered. And if it truly was an animal... 

Those eyes were at head height.

It was no sewer rat.

Erin stared at the spot between the bars for a few long moments. Perhaps, like Jas, she'd simply... imagined it?

**Author's Note:**

> The only romance option in this fic is Krobus, and he will feature repeatedly. But if you find that you would especially like to look at a particular aspect of world building or a specific character, I'm open to prompts :)
> 
> If there was something you liked, please feel free to let me know in the comments; if not, have a good night.
> 
> If you're looking for me on social media I'm fascination_ex on twitter.


End file.
